Early modern time-space compression - Time-Space Compression: Historical Geographies - page 40

3 Early modern time-space

compression

The global expansion of capitalism, starting in the sixteenth century ushered
in a dramatically new world-historical era in which the process of time-space
compression, which had distinctly premodern roots, accelerated rapidly,
became permanent, and was increasingly accepted as natural by large numbers
of the world's people. At the core of this period were the trading and colonial
empires that fl flourished across the planet (Tracy 1991), which, in creating the

fi first Eurocentric global system, brought together vast realms of the planet

under the umbrella of Western political, economic, and ideological domina-
tion. Materially, this process led directly to a transformation of Europe from
a collection of impoverished feudal states to the hegemon of the world sys-
tem due to the waves of surplus value

flowing into the continent from its
overseas possessions. Culturally and ideologically, the hegemonic con

fl

gura-
tion of ideational traits that accompanied this process—modernity—itself
re

fi

ected and produced a steady series of changes over time and across space.
The earliest forms of modernity, those associated most closely with colo-
nialism, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, indicate the constellation
of attributes that characterize global capitalism prior to the Industrial
Revolution. Modernity, of course, was not one single, uni

fl

ed discourse, but a
multitude of interlaced discourses whose Western orientation re

fi

fl ected and

contributed to the West's political and economic hegemony.

Early modern colonialism and the remaking of world time
and space
The most explicit and enduring symbol of early modern time-space com-
pression was colonialism, an economic, political, cultural, and geographic
phenomenon that swept countless cultures into a vortex of global trade and
investment, connecting far- ung cultures to an unprecedented degree. The

European domination of the world widened the Western ecumene from Europe
to the entire globe on a scale unprecedented in world history. Crosby (1997:ix)
eloquently contrasts the sheer scalar di

fl

erences between premodern and early
modern empires: “Cyrus the Great, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and
Huayna Capac were great conquerors, but they were all con

ff

fi ned to no more